This project has the theoretical aims of approaching tests of labeling theory as an explanation of delinquent career development and of testing the efficacy of selected organizational variables as predictors of social agency response to delinquent clients. It has the practical aims of evaluating the impact of police diversion programs for juvenile offenders and identifying personal, social, psychological, and organizational foci for maximizing the potential of diversion and referral as delinquency prevention techniques. The project will be carried out in two settings, as part of a large diversion project in the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and in a number of smaller, independent municipal police departments with highly varied approaches to diversion. The combination of theoretical and practical aims is made possible through viewing operational diversion programs as the practitioners' operationalization of labeling theory propositions.